After keeping busy with various other projects for the past several years, Minus 5 mastermind Scott McCaughey gave vent to a pent-up supply of music in 2014 with a limited-edition, vinyl-only five-LP set for Record Store Day. Now he’s culled those 57 tracks into a 12-song overview, “Dungeon Golds,” that includes the song “Zero Clowns.” The track premieres today on Speakeasy.

McCaughey altered this version slightly from the one on last year’s set, “Scott the Hoople in the Dungeon of Terror,” changing the intro to start with guitar instead of bass, and shortening what he calls “the ending guitar freakout, which Jeff Tweedy did.” The song also features former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and former Decemberists drummer Ezra Holbrook.

When Staple Singers patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples died in 2000, he left behind a collection of half-finished songs, along with instructions for his daughter Mavis: “Don’t lose this.” Now his admonition doubles as the title of his final album, “Don’t Lose This,” which Mavis Staples has completed in time to mark what would have been her father’s 100th year. The 10-track album includes the song “Friendship,” which premieres today on Speakeasy.

It’s a poignant, easygoing song that praises the virtues of, well, friendship. Pops Staples plays guitar and sings lead in a mellow tenor, with backing vocals from his daughters, Mavis, Yvonne and Cleotha Staples, who died in 2013.

“I’m so happy and relieved to finally get it finished,” Mavis Staples says of the album.

Along with eight studio albums and a handful more collaborative releases over the past two decades, Wilco has been generous with extra material: b-sides, alternate versions, live tracks and demos have popped up on bonus EPs, various compilations and as online giveaways. The Chicago band marks its 20th anniversary with a four-disc set that brings together many of those songs, including a live version of “California Stars” that streams today on Speakeasy.

Wilco recorded the studio version of the song with Billy Bragg for “Mermaid Avenue,” their 1998 collaboration on lyrics written, but never recorded, by Woody Guthrie. Wilco and Bragg performed this live take on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” on Sept. 30, 1998, and later released the song on the “Mermaid Avenue Bonus EP.” Read More »

If you’re going to team up with Jimmy Fallon in charades, you’d better bring your A game. Basketball legend Charles Barkley joined Fallon, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy and Ewan McGregor for a round of the popular party activity, but his confusion over the hand signals left the “Tonight Show” host mildly irritated to say the least.

“Four words!” screamed Fallon in a mini-tantrum after Barkley thought “The Karate Kid” was an appropriate guess for the already-established four-word clue (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles“). But Barkley wasn’t going to take any razzing from the charades purist: “Listen, that was awful,” he deadpanned upon learning that Fallon’s “Kung Fu Fighting”-esque dance was his interpretation of the word “ninja.” Read More »

Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy rarely has ideas for music videos, but a favorite one-liner sparked the inspiration for “Low Key,” a song from the new album he recorded with his 18-year-old son Spencer.

“I always tell people that Wilco for years have practically gone door-to-door to sell records,” the elder Tweedy says in an exclusive interview with Speakeasy.

That’s exactly what the Tweedys do in their video, directed by Nick Offerman, who plays Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” The video is packed with sight gags, including a stone-faced Jeff Tweedy riding in a motorcycle sidecar, wearing a red foam nose and demonstrating some jaunty dance moves. “The only way to deal with the reverence in which I hold his musical talent was to put him in a clown nose and make him dance funny,” Offerman says. “Otherwise, I would have made everything too precious.”

Click through to read more, and watch the video for “Low Key.” Read More »

Jeff Tweedy has taken a break from his day job as frontman for Wilco to release a duo album of sorts under the moniker Tweedy, which pairs the songwriter and guitarist with his son, Spencer, on drums. Last night the two appeared on “The Colbert Report,” where they played two tracks from their debut “Sukierae” (out today), and talked about how the father-son relationship has evolved.

“In kindergarten, I had a real good time telling kids my dad was a rock star,” Spencer Tweedy told Colbert. But soon, the tides changed, and kids started to talk to Spencer about his dad’s rock stardom on the playground. “It really started happening when kids would come up to me and say “My parents really like your Daddy’s music.”

46-year-old Jeff Tweedy is venturing outside the confines of Wilco this fall with a new project, simply titled “Tweedy.” But it’s not your average solo album. The acclaimed singer-songwriter teamed up with his son Spencer Tweedy, 18, who plays drums, thus making this extracurricular project a family affair.

Their debut album is called “Sukierae” and today they released the first video for “Summer Noon,” a simple animated clip that follows a red balloon traversing over bodies of water, high mountain tops and train-track filled canyons. The clip was created by Allison House, an app maker who recently started playing around with 3D animation, according to her website. Read More »

On Thursday’s season finale of “Parks and Recreation,” the gang enjoyed a blast from the past at a concert featuring reunited rockers Land Ho! (a fictional band fronted by the real Jeff Tweedy). However, by the end of the episode–spoiler alert—the characters had leapt forward in time. The final moments took place three years in the future in a National Park Service office in Pawnee, where we join Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), her husband Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) and—hello, youngsters!–their toddler triplets.

The time jump was the writers’ way of keeping the show fresh as it transitions into a seventh (and likely final) season. We spoke to “Parks and Recreation” co-creator and executive producer Mike Schur about the pros and cons of TV time travel, organizing the Pawnee/Eagleton Unity Concert, and how they orchestrated a cameo by First Lady Michelle Obama. Read More »

If Wilco’s new album “Wilco (The Album),” released Tuesday, feels like it’s already been around for a while, that’s because it has.

Wilco made it available for streaming in mid-May via the band’s Web site, asking fans who downloaded it for free to contribute to the group’s favorite charities. NPR listeners could taste the entire album on the network’s Web site. The band has been playing most of the songs in their live set since early this year and debuted two songs, “One Wing” and “Sonny Feeling,” last July.

But the album also feels familiar because it’s retro-minded, with folk and early-’70s pop at its core. By any standards, it’s a fine piece of work, at times, as tenderhearted as any music Wilco’s released on disk. Jeff Tweedy’s songwriting is particularly strong on the new set. But Wilco is capable of much more, as they prove in concert. Read More »

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.